strike deep the muscle chords
by innocuous nihil-boy
Summary: Zechs struggles to perform for his General as both a soldier and a lover, but Treize learns slowly that the tactics of romance are not so brutal as the tactics of warfare. semicanon 13x6, abuse, noncon, character death.
1. in the dim, in the cold

**strike deep the muscle cords.**_  
_

_all standard disclaimers apply. this is a work of fanfiction and therefore the author claims no legal rights to characters or implied storyline. no profit is made from this posting. the author does, however, claim all rights to the permutations of the words herein; this is his__ story of a story. warnings: harsh language, explicit male homosexual relationships, implied female homosexual and heterosexual relationships, emotional and sexual abuse, non-consensual sex, explicit and implied war-related violence, eventual character death and some serious angst. semi-canon. possible verbosity. weird sense of humour._

_cord_

_1__ a__ **:** a long slender flexible material usually consisting of several strands (as of thread or yarn) woven or twisted together _

___b__ **: **the hangman's rope _

_____2** :** a moral, spiritual, or emotional bond _

_____3____ a__ **:** an anatomical structure (as a nerve or tendon) resembling a cord;_

_______chord_

_______1 : three or more musical tones sounded simultaneously_

_______2 : a resonant feeling or emotion (as striking a chord)_

* * *

**01: in the dim, in the cold.  
**

"How long has it been?"

The enquiry was almost too quiet for the regal voice issuing it, too soft a question for the ginger-haired man whose eyes were gleaming a spectral sapphire in the subdued streetlamp slashing his face through the blinds. Those slashes, that brutality even in light as it crossed Treize Khushrenada were all that comforted Zechs into answering; familiar ground. "I can't remember anymore."

"Neither can I." Treize released the window from his gaze, a slow blink that began to etch ages of violence into his handsome features, exhaustion in his brow. "Isn't that strange?" he mused, finally facing the Lightning Baron, "I've lost track of the time. I've lost count."

"That isn't something you'd do," Zechs agreed, pushing the edge of the sheets down to his nude abdomen. "Come back to bed. You rarely get the chance for a full night's rest."

"Forgive me for disturbing you," Treize hummed, though he remained standing, his palm flat against the windowframe and supporting his weight as though the sheer force of his being were too much for his slim form. Zechs understood this; Zechs had seen him topple worlds.

"What is disturbing _you?_ Does the street know a secret?" The blonde frowned, nodding towards Treize's vantage point at the window, and was rewarded with a low chuckle.

"It is the secret of the night that perturbs me, my love." Finally, Treize pushed himself away from the wall and stumbled, weary with sleep deprivation and stillness, down to his lover's thighs, hidden beneath the bedsheets. There he knelt at the edge of the bed, curling his elegant fingers around the thick sinew of Zechs' muscle, resting his forehead atop the backs of his pale hands. "It's so silent."

"No reports? No howling engines?" Zechs guessed, entwining his own fingers with the mussed auburn locks that poured into his lap.

"No screaming."

"The war hasn't yet reached this city."

A sharp exhalation tickled Zechs' knee. "We're going to change that."

"Do you want to cancel the attack?"

Treize raised his head to cast a glare of contempt over his pilot's concerned countenance. "Of course not. The attack will commence at dawn, as planned."

"And there will be screaming in every street," Zechs confirmed, removing his hands from Treize's shoulders where they had fallen and dropping them, useless, to the bed.

"If a man wishes for silence, he goes into space," Treize snapped, his authority slipping into his voice, as he propelled himself back to his feet and turned from the adonis sharing his bed, facing down the window as though it were a challenge to his military accomplishment.

"We're _in_ space, _sir,"_ Zechs replied just as coldly, reminded of his position as inferior officer and all things from which he escaped into Treize's embrace in these clandestine moments they shared as lovers, not soldiers.

"No," Treize stalked to the window, his footsteps controlled but his posture tense, and gave the cord of the blinds a vicious yank. "We're no more in space than Earth is, caught up in the gravity of her situation and swirling," he gestured into the sudden wash of amaranthine glow that smeared across Zechs' honeyed skin like a viscous halo, and the pilot barely refrained from flinching at the shadow of his general's palm as it swept his cheek.

"This is as far into space at it gets, sir. No matter how deep we go, we'll always build stations. We need solid ground, oxygen, a place to be. A man can only drift inside a machine inside a _vacuum_ for so long."

"And a man cannot live in silence forever," Treize restrained his triumphant smirk but Zechs, who had memorised the contours of that charismatic face, caught the faintest twitch of those cruel lips from the general's profile. "No matter where we go, the noise of our humanity will follow. Space is no escape. We must change that noise itself before we get any farther."

"I am aware that you believe mankind is aching to scream. What I don't understand is your mercurial approach to the task of _making _us scream," Zechs lowered his gaze and his voice for his next admission, "though you do it often enough."

"Mercurial?" Treize turned a purposefully wounded expression to the brazen colonel, ignoring his personal implications for the moment. "I have never faltered in my grim duties."

"Duties which you yourself choose to undertake," Zechs reminded him, voice creeping into higher decibles, "And decide to make them grim. This is just what I mean! You declare your distaste for the battles you enjoy, battles you create yourself! You relish in your toy soldiers but blame us for your sorrow!"

"Lower your voice, Colonel," Treize interrupted what could have become an incensed tirade from the blonde, though no hint of rank or superiority permeated his order. Instead, the General seemed saddened, now entirely focused on the intimate issues Zechs had been concealing, obviously for some time. "You aren't a toy to me, Milliard," Treize employed the use of his lover's private identity, softening his voice to his most soothing tone.

Instead of calming, however, Zechs leapt from the bed with a flurry of motion, growling out his words even as he struggled blindly with the sheet that had clung to his calves and now prevented him from pacing or even approaching the object of his sudden torrent of pent-up anger. "You can't fucking do that, Treize. You can't pull rank and then use..._ that_ name in the same goddamn sentence. I'm _not_ a toy, but you're certainly treating me like a yo-yo! I'm not-"

Before Zechs could finish unravelling his legs, Treize slipped behind the slim mess of tightly-wound muscle that was his shouting subordinate and cupped a hand over those cherubic lips, silencing the blonde's outburst. Zechs grunted furiously but lowered his arms to his sides, unable to strike his superior officer no matter how intimate their relationship.

"If you cannot handle being both my lover and my subordinate," Treize hissed into Zechs' ear, his lips brushing the sensitive lobe and whispering through stray strands of platinum, "We will stop this foolishness now, because I am not interested in also being your emotional disciplinarian. I do not need this juvenile behaviour, Milliard, and I will not tolerate it in my lovers _or_ my officers. You-" Treize bit off his reproach at the abrupt and unexpected splash of wetness on the top of his hand. Blinking, lips just slightly parted in shock, he considered the trembling body in his arms; the pilot's thick muscle was barely noticeable beneath this... fragility. "Milliard?" _Splash._ "Mill-" _Splash splash._

Treize's Lighting Baron was crying.

Gently, Treize released Zech's chin and turned the taller man to face him, enveloping the broad shoulders in his arms. "I did not realise this upset you so much, my love."

Shaking his head and dislodging more unruly white-blonde locks, Zechs pulled out of Treize's grip and scraped a palm roughly across his moist cheeks. "Can _you_ handle it, Treize? You can't separate yourself from the war; it affects you, despite your ideals, and it affects us. There hasn't been a night I've been in your bed that you haven't used your rank against me, despite your promises that our intimate relationship would remain separate from our professional one."

"Milliard-" Treize reached again for his lover, but Zechs held a firm hand between them, his fingertips a whisper away from pushing the general back.

"I thought the mask was enough. It appears I was wrong. You are always Treize; yourself, a general, with... _lovers,"_ here Zechs' voice faltered almost inaudibly but Treize, who had spent years memorising the minute inflections of his famed pilot to atone for the expressions he concealed, noticed, and it pained him to be the cause, "yet I am required to be two different men for you, though you will not even allow me to separate them. Milliard is dead," Zechs declared with such resigned bitterness, leaning towards the coffee table on which the silver helmet, bane of his duplicitous existence, lay discarded. He collected the cool metal and positioned it over his head, his near-angelic visage hardening under the familiar weight, the restriction, his rank. "I have only one face, sir," Zechs ended his confession with the abrupt, nonsenseless snap of a soldier's edge, the total finality in his tone causing Treize's lower lip to drop just slightly enough for his expression to be uncharacteristically stricken. Zechs walked away.

"Milliard, wait," Treize called after him, brow furrowing as he found himself tentatively stepping forward but unable to follow, trapped as he was by this unforseen loss. "Colonel, stop."

Zechs did stop, then; the delirious sculpture of his lean silhouette, the carved globes of his impossibly firm buttocks and the pale waterfall of a mane licking at that swell giving Treize a fleeting moment of hope that his lover truly was his subordinate, but; "The world is not your plaything, Treize. If you use rank to force me to comply with your personal wishes, I'll prosecute you for sexual coercion."

Treize's jaw clamped shut. He lashed his raging thoughts back into his customary control of a diplomat and forced his voice to be still. "Milliard-"

"My name is Zechs, sir," the Lighting Baron interrupted, closing the bedroom door to collect his shed clothing in privacy.


	2. missive and misgivings

**02: missive and misgivings.**

Treize, even in his most rumpled and harried state, could not bring himself to properly hunch over his ornate mahogany desk and the composition thereupon. No, Treize sat with dignified posture as he filled yet another page with his elegant penmanship; the last and most important letter he would address tonight. A day of mediation between his involuntary pawns and unsuspecting peers, and paperwork, so much dreary paperwork to confirm or deny his plans that were brilliant in their initiation, now tiresome in their activation, left the proud General thirsting for honest companionship and perhaps a glass of aged brandy. And a massage.

Oh, how Zechs could give massages.

_Milliard cannot and never will be dead so long as Zechs lives. I have taken both the horrid mask that, it seems, protects you from me, and you for granted and I sincerely and deeply apologise for my numerous egregious offences to your heart, for no matter how many faces you wear, there is but one beating within the chest of the man I so cherish._

_Your personality is no more split than mine; Zechs would not exist without Milliard; Zechs is merely a name for your degree of control over yourself, something which I have certainly been lacking in our engagements. You are the only man who tempts me to lose control, and I have abused your allowance of this luxury almost unforgivably._

_I say almost because I hope that you will return to me tonight, without the mask, and I will lay my badges and decorations at the door._

Treize set his gold-emblazoned pen in its inkwell, then picked it up again, deciding impulsively that his star pilot and incensed lover would require more of him emotionally than such a simple, logical entreaty if he were to regain the blonde's sorely-lost affections.

_Please, Milliard. Please come. I miss you until my very skin is aching for yours. These diplomatic hours and hours of debate and forced revelry with sycophant aristocrats who know nothing of battle and battalion leaders who know nothing of decorum... These people who should have no influence in our grand cause and who, in fact, do not _deserve_ influence in the lives of any of the innocents they unwittingly command into squalor and mutilation... It all wears so heavily on me, but they must not see it. Only you can I trust with the full gravity of this burden. Only you are able to find me in this loneliest place reserved for those who have seen every snarling and simpering face of war, who have tasted of blue-blood and found its flavour running red through the discarded flesh of the human machine of carnage. Many know why full dress uniform includes gloves, but only you know why the Chairmen and the Presidents and the Advisors and the Ambassadors hide their hands from each other. We are not simply stained, we are tattooed with thousands of haunted faces that all answer to one name; murderer. Leader; bargainer of lives.  
_  
_Only you can love me, Milliard. Please come to me tonight._

_I will be in the Darwight suite._

_- Yours, General of Thorns._

Surprised at himself for the deluge of confession and, in his heart of strategic hearts, pleased with the impassioned result, Treize sealed the missive with his personal crest, wondering as he trod to the exterior door and his personal deliveryman waiting beyond it if Zechs was not accurate when he declared Treize a coercionist and abuser of power, even if that power were only his wicked tongue and the various incarnations of cunning manipulation for which he employed it.

He keyed in the unlock code on the main door's control panel and passed the simple envelope into his trusted officer's hands with only a quiet murmur of the name of its recipient, and the soldier saluted and was dispatched. Treize, not bothering with bedclothes or the still-lit lamp at his desk, shrugged out of his military coat and tall boots and left them crumpled on the suite loveseat before he soaked bonelessly into the couch, luxuriating in the plush fabric against his bare shoulders and the knotted sinew beneath. Clad only in the tight white breeches of his uniform, he draped a forearm across his brow to shut out the dim lamplight, and waited.

* * *

The letter found Zechs stretched across his regulation mattress, deep into revisions of a mobile-suit piloting manual authored by some Romefellar imbecile who, it seemed, had spent less time in a cockpit than Zechs had spent in an elegant four-poster bed with thick, faux-fur blankets that smelled of roseoil... a different sort of cock-pit about which Zechs would _not_ think. Narrowing his eyes, the sleek adonis re-read the current paragraph for the fourth time, and was finally about to make his corrections when a sharp knock at his door startled him from his thought process. Deciding the manual update was doomed to be released a day later than planned, Zechs set it and his reference pages aside and ambled his way to answer the door, rubbing the taut muscles in his lower back on the way. "Yes?" Zechs enquired of the caller, one hand poised over the silver helmet set atop the simple entryway table should anyone seek his audience.

"Letter for you, sir."

Zechs glowered at the voice of Treize's personal assistant. What could the stubborn, insensitive man have to say to him _now_ that required the use of this particular officer? With a furious jerk, Zechs slapped the door-open console, snatched the letter out of the surprised soldier's hands and had the door swishing shut again before the young man had a chance to glimpse Zechs' secret face, veiled even at that moment by the mass of platinum locks. Zechs stood in a silence for which he unthinkingly held his breath, clutching the letter so tightly in his hands that it began to crinkle, waiting for the sharp taps of the soldier's boots leading him away. Finally the boy was gone and Zechs exhaled, slid a rather sharp fingernail beneath the seal of the envelope and let the ripped wrapping fall in favour of the document he now tore into with his gaze.

_"Yours, General of Thorns."_ So the thorns belonged to Zechs, did they? And what of the brilliant buds that gave the General his influence and authority, that made the man a figure to be recognised and reckoned with? Zechs supposed, not with a little bitterness, that they would blossom only for the world Treize so longed to control, and a mere subordinate such as Zechs would be left to linger beneath the shadow of those extravagant petals, clinging only to the roping vines that lacerate and shred him for his effort. Maybe it was the blood of the men like Zechs in Treize's life that coloured his roses so red.

"Oh, for god's sake, get ahold of yourself," Zechs chided aloud. He bent to retrieve the envelope, only just noticing the small, pressed rosebud that had slipped out of it and now lay discarded on the carpet. A tiny, keening sigh escaped Zechs' lips as he cupped this precious parcel into his palm and carried it to his bedside table, laying it carefully atop the letter before turning to dress himself. Tonight, he would return to the General. Perhaps that enigmatic man with the aristocratic hands and the talented sword at his hip would offer Zechs a few petals after all.

* * *

When a few knocks received no response and no hint of motion, Zechs nearly marched right back to his rooms, fearing another of Treize's cruel games. Reasoning with himself that not even the manipulative General who relished in his battle tactics could be so cavalier with his prized pilot's emotional state, Zechs opted to try the key-code to Treize's door, half-expecting it to have been changed to exclude him from his previous full access.

It hadn't been.

Zechs' eyes adjusted quickly to the subdued lighting as the door swished shut behind him, and obedient to Treize's requests as ever, he removed his helmet and set it on the floor in the entryway. After leaving his boots beside the unforgiving metal, Zechs meandered cautiously into the main room of the suite and was taken aback by the sight of the General of OZ draped languidly over his couch, half-nude and fully in the throws of well-deserved sleep, given the trials of the attacks staged that day. One of Treize's arms was slung over the back of the couch, the other dangling ever-gracefully, even in slumber, down to brush the carpet; his white-clad legs were crossed at the ankle, and he was altogether glowing with hushed power and tenderness.

Unable to bring himself to wake the peaceful man, Zechs simply collapsed into the loveseat adjacent to him, noticing too late that his firm rump crushed the highly-decorated military coat Treize had carelessly discarded. Thoughts churning with too many implications as he watched Treize's chest rise and fall, metaphors and insiduous truths in the missive, feverous contemplation of the feeling of that hard chest against his cheek and under his palms as he rode the General until both were gasping, Zechs slumped into a fitful sleep where he sat.


	3. warms the dead with his breath

_this chapter contains most of the warnings mentioned in the disclaimer, and is highly explicit._**  
**

**03: warms the dead with his breath.**

When Zechs' eyelashes fluttered open sometime early into dawn, the first thing he noticed was the thin, glistening chain looped around the headboard directly in front of him. But that wasn't right, his bed didn't have... Wintery blue eyes widened, instantly fully alert, to perceive the cuffs cutting into the protruding bones of his wrists along with the chain that connected them, and effectively made him a prisoner of Treize's bed. He had, after all, fallen asleep in the chambre of another man, and left his guard along with his mask at the door. As though sensing Zechs' thoughts, aforementioned General slid from the early morning shadows and into the pale streams of light filtering through the window, clad only in elegant silk trousers, almost tangibly purring. Zechs squirmed in discomfort, trying to glance over his shoulder.

"You left your mask off," Treize murmured affectionately, rubbing the silver-capped tip of a riding crop handle along the underside of his jaw. He paused in his stride, an unspoken threat.

"Don't- don't," Zechs mewled, arching his stomach off the mattress and twisting his arms. He failed to reposition himself on his back before Treize roughly pushed him down and jerked the chains tighter, forcing the blonde's arms wider, enough to prevent movement beyond a bucking of the hips. Zechs lowered his face into the crook of his shoulder as he felt the crop's popper trace his shoulderblades. He knew what was coming, knew Treize would not accept any answer other than the one he wished to hear. The loop of hard leather snaked a teasing trail down the curve of Zechs' spine and lingered, just for a moment, at the dimpled swell of his firm ass before cracking a gentle blow to the side of one cheek.

Treize's lips twisted with satisfaction when the pilot's body flinched, clenching ever-so-many of those taut, roping muscles for the benefit of the General's view. "I've been labouring under a misconception, my Milliard." Another crack, this one harder, between the cheeks. Treize wielded all of his chosen weapons expertly, of course; Zechs knew if the strikes hurt, Treize wanted him to hurt.

Sometimes Treize wanted him to bleed.

"Did you know?" the General continued, almost jovial in his rhetoric, "You must have, as you were the cause." A sidelined slap from the flat leather popper. "I believed you would only obey me if you called me General," a sharp crack to Zechs' inner thigh caused the bound blonde to spread his legs a little wider, the chains linked to his ankles jingling, "but you just want to be punished. You'll always be mine." Treize slithered on top of Zechs, the fine silk of his evening attire whispering over the blonde's flesh with beguiling gentleness when Treize leaned over Zechs' prone body to hum into his ear, "You were mine the first moment I took you into my arms so many years ago, when you were a frightened, lost little prince and I was destined for greatness." Slowly, the older man worked his strong palms down his pilot's stiff lower back, kneading some of Zechs' tenseness away, soothing the pilot's anxiety with teasing lips against his earlobe, the nape of his neck.

Treize produced a small tube from his pocket and lathered his fingertips with the rose-scented fluid, his breath husking across Zechs' sensitive skin as he murmured, "But I could not have come this far without you, my little Prince. You are my truest ally in all my endeavours, in romance and warfare, all things that define a man at his finest and his worst... You let me be human, Milliard." Just as Zechs allowed his eyes to flutter closed, comforted by the gentle ministrations of his domineering lover, Treize slid his slickened fingers between the perfect globes of Zechs' ass and plunged them into his tight entrace, penetrating his restrained lover roughly and without warning as he whispered, "You make me a man."

Zechs arched off the bed with a keening wail, his lips pulling back in a grimace, his breath coming in short gasps. "Treize- Treize, please-"

"Are you mine, Milliard?" Treize demanded, scissoring his fingers deeper into Zechs' body, thick muscle slowly accepting the invading digits.

"Please, Treize- don't- not like this," the blonde pleaded, writhing beneath his General, wrists and ankles straining against their chains. Treize caught up his riding crop and dealt Zechs a brutal lash across the top of his ass, relishing how the muscle clenched around his fingers, aching to slide his throbbing cock into that warmth.

"Say that you're mine."

"Treize-" Another lash, stinging Zechs' whipped flesh enough to redden, and the blonde cried out.

Treize slapped the popper against the smooth skin between Zechs' shoulderblades, resting the hard leather there threateningly. "Say it."

"I'm yours," Zechs gasped, bending forward to curve his round ass towards his strict lover, his stretched entrance now swallowing Treize's fingers, "I'm yours, Treize... please."

"Please what?" the General murmured, dropping his whip to the bed and unlacing the tie at the waist of his trousers, freeing his ample erection.

"Please..." Zechs' taut body twisted as he squirmed again, unsure whether he wanted the powerful man to stop as he'd been begging or plunge into him and ride him until he forgot how to beg.

A confident smirk creased Treize's lips, and he slipped his fingers from inside the hot cavern of the blonde's body, quickly positioning the weeping head of his cock at Zechs' twitching entrance. "I know what you want," he purred, and thrust in to the hilt.

Zechs bucked off the bed, unleashing a low, masculine scream as the thickness of his lover's erection split his inner walls, every visible muscle in his lean form flexing deliciously beneath Treize's hands and hips, his own untouched arousal scraping against the delicate satin of Treize's bedsheets and sending floods of sensation that electrified his nerves as they mingled with the deep satisfaction of the hard shaft rubbing that sweet spot within him. Treize remained still, teasing him, allowing his body to adjust, and Zechs could feel the older man's triumphance at forcing him into wanting this, forcing him to need the thick cock inside him, forcing him to plead for the brutal fucking only Treize could give him.

Zechs rotated his hips, trying to impale himself deeper on Treize's erection before those elegant hands gripped him, restraining his movements. "Please what?" the ginger-haired sadist asked again, his voice just straining the edge of calm.

"Please fuck me, Treize," Zechs submitted with a husky whisper, hearing the reigns beginning to snap in Treize's rigid self-control, hearing his lover near that precipice after which there was no turning back, there was nothing but their bodies moving together and their sweat and Zechs' blood and Treize's lips-

And Treize, hearing his conquest in that sultry voice of his lover, obliged.

He began sliding in and out of the pilot with a torturous, tantalising rhythm, the thickness of his cock scraping across his lover's inner walls, tingling his nerves into liquid fire that spread through the blonde's body until Zechs was moaning in rhythm, twisting his head from side to side, thrusting his own untouched arousal into the mattress. Steadily, Treize built up their pace until he was pounding into the pilot, whipping him over and over in the small of his back until he was bucking into the vicious thrusts on his own, matching Treize's rhythm with the twists of his lean body, firm ass bouncing against Treize's sharp hipbones and taking the hard shaft faster and deeper as Treize's teeth sank into his neck again and again, the General's fingertips digging bruises into his thighs as his own hands clawed helplessly at the sheets.

Treize fucked him until he was gasping, babbling for more, arching off the bed and screaming- Treize fucked him raw, teasing him with slow penetration and sudden, savage thrusts, until Zechs was speechless with pleasure, his lips parted with each panting breath, each low moan elicited as Treize slid out to the hard ridge of the head... and each sharp gasp, body jerking, as Treize slammed back in, his stiff cock driving against that sensitive spot and sending Zechs wild into wanton shudders of ecstasy, his tight hole clenching around Treize's length, begging for more. Treize gave him more, head thrown back as he pounded into Zechs, breath hissing between his bared teeth with the effort and gratification of reducing his talented, brilliant pilot into this writhing adonis on his knees for Treize, the powerful and lean body of a soldier bucking under him, belonging to him completely, meeting his vicious thrusts with desperation for the pleasure that only he could provide.

"Treize," the pilot rasped, barely managing the name before a low groan tore from his throat, "Un- un- untie- _AHhhh-"_

The General buried a hand in Zechs' unruly hair and jerked his head back, slowing their pace to long, agonising rocking. "What?" he hissed, grazing his teeth across the tendons in the blonde's throat.

"Untie me, please," Zechs panted, his eyes heavy-lidded, head lolling slightly in Treize's grip. "I wa- _unh,"_ he degenerated into another soft grunt of bliss as Treize slammed into him roughly, enjoying the power he wielded over his lover's ability to speak. "I want t-t- to touch you, Treize, let me..."

With a dangerous, acquisitive gleam in his porcelain eyes, Treize leaned forward - jarring the writhing blonde with a deep, driving thrust - and produced the key for the shackles, freeing Zechs' reddened wrists. He slid from the sensuous embrace of Zechs' body and allowed the younger man, whimpering as he was from the loss, to roll onto his back beneath his General, his angelic face flushed and licentious, catching his breath through perfect sanguine lips that Treize instantly began to devour with his own. Zechs murmured into the older man's mouth, melting into the kiss and looping his arms around Treize's shoulders as his thighs were pushed open by strong, conquering hands and his legs were folded against his chest, their throbbing arousals rubbing together.

"Satisfied?" Treize grunted, pumping Zechs' weeping cock in his fist, smearing the blonde's precum with his thumb.

"It's never enough," Zechs moaned, thrusting up into the caress and lifting his ass enough for Treize to drive back inside him, filling him, this new angle of penetration twisting his inner walls and grinding into that sweet spot so hard Zechs would have come, screaming, right then, if not for Treize's cruel grip on the base of his erection. "OH- Oh- _ohh_... please, Treize- fuck-" Zechs mewled, his entire body shuddering and twisting under Treize's hard abdomen, his fingertips clawing across the General's muscled shoulders. Treize shut him up by pushing his thumb, coated with the blonde's feral essence, into Zechs' mouth, unable to stop a low groan as that devilish tongue instantly began to lap at the pearly fluid, his lips sealing around the digit and sucking eagerly, drinking his own come off Treize's skin.

They began moving together, Zechs rocking and gyrating his hips into each of Treize's powerful thrusts as the older man savaged his body with experienced lips, Zechs' fingernails ripping visible trails down Treize's back, his hard-muscled thighs squeezing the General's body against his, dragging the breath from Treize in short pants until Treize's abs were rubbing his aching cock between them and Zechs could feel his completion approaching, the white-hot coil of pleasure rapidly spreading between his legs. Shuddering, his jaw dangling open in silent ecstasy until a deep cry ripped from his throat, Zechs came, spilling his seed in a viscous coating across his taut stomach, his inner muscles clamping onto Treize's thick cock and wringing orgasm from the growling General, who shot his own fluid into the ravaged hole, filling Zechs with his essence, owning him.

They collapsed together, both panting, the sheets sticking to their sweat-soaked skin, revelling in soreness of their muscles and the aftershocks of their release, Treize's languid form blanketing his lover, Zechs's knees lowering to wrap around his General's thighs.

"Mine," Treize murmured into Zechs' skin. "Nothing else. No facades, no performances. You're here with me, now," he stroked Zechs' cheek with nimble fingertips and knew exactly what to say, "and you are worth the world."

"Ngh," Zechs agreed intelligently, nuzzling into Treize's hand as the older man ran the pad of his thumb tenderly across Zechs' raw lower lip. His lashes fluttered open, eyes darkened pools of electricity, twin comet tails blazing in a white sky as he focused on his lover's face with a small, sated smile.

"I love this expression you have after I've ravaged you," Treize hummed, sucking that puffy lip between his teeth for a gentle nibble, "You're like a whore that's finally been satisfied, a god who's found his way to nirvana..." his expert tongue lapped across the sharp point of Zechs' incisor, plundering the blonde's mouth, "and loved the taste."

As thoroughly debauched as he was, gazing up at his lover with those winter-blue bedroom eyes, Zechs managed a soft snicker, "You are a gift to a god himself, truly." Treize rewarded him with a sharp bite to his neck, pinching the tender skin enough that he hissed. "Don't leave a mark that high- uniform collar won't cover it."

"A General is free to mark his soldiers all he wishes," Treize quipped, instantly regretting it when Zechs' expression hardened into the cold guise of the pilot, erasing the luxurious glow of their lovemaking. "Forgive me, Milliard, I didn't..." He sighed, brushed his lips across the blonde's. "I was only teasing."

"You tease so often that it isn't a game, Treize, it's your normal behaviour." Zechs pushed the older man off him, dropped his feet to the floor and stood, stretching, his back to Treize, speaking curtly over his shoulder, "That was good. I have a manual to review."

Treize crossed his legs on the bed, leaning back and supporting himself on his elbows, expression inscrutable, silent. Zechs left him there, the silk of his trousers clinging like a second skin against his sweat, to dress.


	4. into the black

**04: into the black.**

"Do you know what it's like to reach the edge?"

Three platoons stood in rapt attention, not one soldier daring to flinch as the Colonel deigned to grace them with an impromtu speech before their second mobile-suit piloting exercise of the day. "At the edge," Zechs continued, his voice soft enough that the soldiers strained to listen, his helmet glistening as he spun and began pacing back down the length of the formation front, "there is no such thing as reason. There is no such thing as you. There is only blackness, and the machine keeping it at bay."

This small company was composed of serious men and women who wanted to become serious pilots and took their rank and occupation very seriously. If their formation had permitted it, most of them would have been taking very serious notes.

"At the edge, you cease to exist. You have no memories, no hopes or dreams, no ambitions. All you have is your training, and whether or not it's been ingrained enough to still exist without you, like the auxilliary program left to run your brain. At the edge," Zechs repeated a third time, as studies had shown that information in sequences of three was absorbed more efficiently in auditory learning, "There is only the machine, the program, and the abyss." He halted in his stride and returned to the centre front of the company, hands clasped behind his back, posture naturally regal. "And that abyss, ladies and gentlemen, is trying to swallow you whole." His brief lecture concluded, Zechs spun on the toe of his glistening military boot and strode away, past the company Captain who saluted and opened his mouth to shout his units towards their next training facility, but:

"Colonel Zechs! Colonel Zechs, sir!"

The Captain froze, not daring to interrupt the Colonel's lesson, should he choose to answer; unsure whether the screaming fit this unruly soldier deserved would irritate the Colonel.

Zechs paused mid-stride, one powerful leg slowly returning to the floor as he regarded the voice casually over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"Why did you tell us this, Colonel sir? I'm so glad you came to talk with us personally, but I don't understand what your point was. I mean, we've had all the classes about space, we've been through all the physical testing, and we've been in the simulators." The Captain's eyes widened; in fury or fright, Zechs didn't bother to discern, but no one said a word.

He allowed the smallest of smiles to crease his lips as he turned, fully addressing the vocal soldier; a young woman with unusually inquisitive eyes. "Have you ever experienced claustrophobia?" he spoke quietly, his intonation almost serene, fond as he was of soldiers who questioned, soldiers who intended to understand.

"No, sir."

"Have you ever been in a very small, enclosed compartment against your will?"

"In training, Sir-"

"Were you forced to join the Specials, soldier?" Zechs interrupted.

"Sir? Of course not."

"And you knew, then, that harsh training would be in your future. You knew, during the training exercise, that you would be confined in order to simulate war-time experiences, did you not?"

"Yes, Sir." A slow wisdom began to blossom in her expression.

"Even if you were unhappy with the exercise, you chose to endure it. Perhaps you even willed yourself into enduring it for the sake of your military career." Zechs raised his voice to address the entire company, "Your training, your simulations, all of your experiences here are designed to prepare your body and your abilities for battle, and one of those abilities is self-control to the point of an all-powerful, executable will. You have not been trained for, and indeed may never truly know, the experience of having that will compromised. Your mobile suits, your guns, even your hands are all lethal, superhuman extensions of that will- and you may lose these extensions, all of them," Zechs' teeth gleamed, "but you only lose the _will itself_ when you lose yourself. In most battles, that is simply the end of your career."

A subdued chuckle ran through the platoons; Zechs did not mind. His inquisitive soldier gazed at him as though he were a messiah.

"But you are Specials. You do not fight most battles. You fight at the edge; you extend your wills into the abyss." His tone deepened here, intensifying, "And the abyss, vacuum that it is, will suck them dry. Which do you think ends first, an infinite oblivion or your wills?"

Thunderous silence.

"Men and women, highly-trained Special Forces all, have gone into that abyss and never come back. Even if they won the battle. Even if their mobile suits were intact, their guns undischarged, their hands still attached. At the edge, you are not fighting mere extensions. You are fighting an eternal will- so vast, so incompromisible, that all you will ever be able to know of it... _is the edge of it."_

Heads began to nod, most of the company having forgotten attention posture in the wake of their Colonel's dissertation.

"No," Zechs snapped, "you still don't know, and I could never enlighten you. If you want to do your comrades a favour, kidnap them in their sleep and lock them in a tiny room. When they awake screaming, they will not even have begun to know. The edge is the opposite of claustrophobia, but it isn't agoraphobia, either, because what you will feel will be entirely rational. And then the rational will cease to exist." He returned his attention to the young woman who prompted this unexpected delve into human-space theory, voice lowering again, gentle, "I am telling you this because when you reach the edge, I _don't want you to go over it._ Know your limits, Private, and then know how space will conquer them all. Space is limitless. Do not, under any circumstances, join it."

Zechs left, then, and even the heavy-handed Captain with the loud mouth was speechless.

* * *

"Hmm," Zechs muttered, coming across an update on the top platoons in the Specials as of training exercises that day, "I should philosophise new companies more often."

_"Oh yes, Major Thurnett reported that your little speech today had them all chasing ghosts. Apparently some best times were massively exceeded."_

Zechs inspected the readout. "Six best laps with live rounds, yes."

_"Of course, none will ever begin to touch your Academy records," _Treize's teasing grin gleamed across the vidphone screen, his split eyebrows raised.

"Of course not," Zechs agreed matter-o-factly, displaying not an ounce of modesty.

Treize chuckled. _"A lesser General would be intimidated."_

"If by 'lesser,' you mean 'idiot,' quite. I've never once demonstrated intentions to succeed you."

_"Idiot appropriately describes someone lesser than me, yes. Have you finished editing the manual?"_

"Yes, sir. I've already dispatched my updates."

_"Mmm," _Treize purred his approval of his efficient Colonel. _"My appearances on L4 are less than appreciated, it would seem."_

"More rioting, sir?"

_"But of course,"_ Treize half-groaned, massaging the bridge of his nose between an elegant thumb and forefinger, _"The day they don't riot in my honour is the day I officially resign my position and retire to the countryside with a plump wife and several fine steeds."_

Zechs quirked an eyebrow, hidden by silver. "I imagine the steeds would see a fair amount more riding-"

_"Finish that sentence, Colonel, and I'll have you court-martialed,"_ Treize rebuked dryly, the humour still glittering in his sapphire gaze, intense even through wires and pixels.

"Would this process involve whips, sir?"

_"Goodnight, Zechs." _The General closed their transmission, but not before Zechs caught his minute wince of unsatisfied desire. The ginger-haired man would not wish him luck, would not even mention the fact that he was embarking on a mission that would keep him away for days, would outright refuse to consider the possibility that he might not return. Zechs understood that his lover felt himself beyond these petty sentiments and prophecies of emotional disarray.

Sighing, Zechs stood, stretched, and began to prepare for his next jaunte through outerspace.

* * *

Treize remained staring at the blackened monitor minutes after he'd ended the feed to his Colonel, still entombed in L3, managing green troops and the wake of their attacks to the homesteads of popular Rebel leaders. Treize remained staring despite the piles of paperwork on his desk, this time a futuristic sandallwood, despite the beginnings of a serious headache and a cramp in his lower back. Treize fantasised briefly that he could will the cherubic face of his lover through that screen.

Treize had been drinking too much.

He was ever-so-tired of following the rules of these weak, pathetic creatures he longed to bury in the bitter parade of human history, and even the enjoyment that maintained his ambition towards his ideals, the pleasure he took in aligning those within his power like squirming chesspieces, was beginning to wane. What he needed was a meeting with his pawns in Romefellar, a good verbal sparring and his inevitable conquering of another dissenter, then a fencing match, and then perhaps a long bath.

Instead, he memorised the gaunt outlines of his face in the darkness of the screen, imagining his eyes to be nebulae, his pupils the fabled wormholes, the glittering of his military decorations as the stars he knew Zechs would be watching, way out in the black.

The prince of his stars would come back.


	5. bleak gears of flesh

**05: bleak gears of flesh.**

Zechs grasped the Tallgeese's controls, curling his iron fingers around the ribbed rubber grips a few times to find the most comfortable position. Over his regiment communicator and hovering in formation behind him, 500 soldiers in Leos awaited his command.

He was waiting to command them, waiting for the first sight of the enemy fleet, the most well-funded rebel army on this colony, that would be guarding the otherwise-helpless carrier vessel that would be stocked with weapons and other supplies that would be en illegal route to the nearest colony satellite. He was waiting for the rain to fall, somewhere, in Moscow, in alien countries, waiting for a flood to break the barriers of sound and crash into him, waiting for an earthquake.

It never came, but the barest glinting tip of metal rounded over the meniscus of the satellite's structure, far off in the distance. Without that strange curvature of a planet, horizons were a difficult proposal out here in the void; there were only the slightest traces of mankind's long development on a world with surfaces, and ends.

"Hold," Zechs warned the more twitchy of his regiment, a large group of five squadrons bringing up the left wing of attack, the wing closest to the oncoming fleet. The limited-range radar of his Tallgeese had not even picked up the presence of battlecraft; only the giant carrier vessel, deceptively lumbering its frictionless way through the vacuum.

"Hold," Zechs warned as the enemy mobile suits became fully visible, strange deformed bodies of frozen men, lost men. Just a bit longer...

"Attack!" he finally screamed, when the first radar blip of approaching battlecraft meant the enemy equipment had a good chance of sensing their presence, "B Company, wing formation delta! I want C company running beta!" Zechs amended their previous formations when he got a good look at the preparations this fleet had made for an OZ attack- extensive. _Too extensive, _the paranoiac residency in his brain whispered. _This is a huge mission right in front of OZ's eyes with no real stealth precautions and serious battle-ready troops of spacecraft, even some commandeered OZ technology... _Zechs' cold, concentrated visage as he gunned through another two, three enemy spacecraft did not morph to express his thoughts, though they began running as wildly as the soldiers under his command.

"B company, back" _-they aren't prepared-_ "in formation! Your" -_they aren't expecting us-_ "second corner is slipping" _-they _wanted _us to be here-_ "down! Too far down! FUCK!" Zechs was bellowing orders as he wove through lines and lines of enemy suits, dodging peacefully-swirling debris of the exploded fallen, gouged and misshapen exoskeletons of metal ripped from the rivets, ice-iron shards eager to rend his machine apart and peel it from around him, the sickly distended humanoid shells just before their explosions and the flapping tongues of fire they vomited just after with muffled popping, silent in the abyss, bones crackling, shrieking soldiers clutching their spacehelmets as the void seeped in through tiny cracks and slowly sucked off their skin, eyes boiling, tongues swelling, split corpses drifting lazily away from the rest of their bodyparts, the blood that poured from their gaping holes freeze-drying into parcels of dust that splattered Zechs' suit as he evaded enemy fire true to his lightning reputation. _Space makes such a mockery of our matter, _he wondered idly, blowing first the leg and then the cockpit off an enemy and ducking away from the resulting tiny firework of a bomb, _dust to dust is an earthly cycle. Out here-_

**BOOM. **Zechs' teeth rattled with the impact of two enemy mecha colliding with- no, _ramming _his, their gear-conquered arms wrapping around the waist of his Tallgeese and locking hands on either side, their pilots expelling themselves through escape vents and scrambling their boosters towards the carrier, unprotected. Imbeciles. "Captains Grecko and Rashbaum," he demanded over the com, and instantly the mentioned pilots flew towards him, "cover me."

With more booster effort than he preferred, Zechs spun Tallgeese and riddled the two kamikazes with bullets before firing his encumbered suit to the nearest large debris, the hip-joints and leg of a destroyed mecha. Grasping it with Tallgeese's hand like a crowbar, he wedged it under the arms of the suits attached to him and then whipped out his beam sabre, slashing through the offending mech-arms as close to his own suit as he could without damaging himself, cursing avidly when prying them from his machine took more time than he was comfortable donating to two large, shrapnel-coated bombs ticking down to self-destruct. "Grecko!" he snapped at the Captain currently firing on a small flight of four spacecraft barrelling towards them, "fuck that, get these goddamn things off me!" After another two or three levers, the mobile suit hands latched together at his front groaned and split, one losing its hold at the wrist where he had burned through the metal. Grecko yanked from the back while Zechs pushed his Tallgeese free of their grasp and, shouting to the Captain to clear the trajectory fast, hurled the conjoined bombs directly into the path of the four spacecraft, which did not scatter fast enough to escape the explosion and resulting oxygen-flux that spat droplets of molten metal through their shields and laced them all in a web of fire. "Back to squadron fronts!" and the summoned Captains dove into their respective frays.

Another mecha flew at him, gun-arms pounding out round after round, with no intention of evasive action even as he sliced it in twain with the sabre; and then another, weaponless, pilotless, that he simply batted into the floating graveyard of machines to explode. _What the hell is going on? _Zechs' mind hissed,_ Suicide missions are usually the last of accepted tactics... unless..._

Unless they just wanted him dead, and Tallgeese destroyed.

Zechs ducked under a persistent flight of spacecraft, expertly weaving his way through a hail of fire between enemy troops as the five pilots doggedly pursued him, launching small ballistic missiles to which he sacrificed several of their Leos for cover, occasionally flipping over the lost soldiers to fire on the flight. When only two remained and had exhausted their supply of warheads, he spun Tallgeese in a complicated manoeuvre that left him light-headed in the wake of his suit's forces and stabbed through one of the craft's cockpits, slinging the husk of the plane into its single remaining partner, which sent them both careening away from him to continue the pyrotechnic display in that black perpetual sky. "Destroy them _all," _he growled to his regiment, annoyed with the hubris of this latest rebel plan, their sore error in believing even these copious amendments to their forces were enough to defeat _him. _"I want _annihilation. _Quarter only to those who surrender absolutely."

_"Sir!"_ One of Zechs' Lieutenants shouted,_ "What about the vessel?"_

"It's only a carrier- take out possible cannons and we'll deal with it after we've completely eliminated their battlecraft. We can't afford to waste any soldiers with these numbers."

Had Zechs not given that order, those copious amendments to the rebel forces would have killed him.

Violently they battled, and though the rebel spacecraft outnumbered his faction nearly 3 to 1, the Leos under his command quickly approached victory, mowing through the remaining mobile suits and fewer remaining battlecraft with minimal losses; less than 20 by his count, and almost certainly thanks to his skill. The vessel showed no signs of discharging space cannons, and it wasn't until the first few nodes on his warhead-weapons detector lit that Zechs noticed anything unusual.

"Lieutenant Otto, are you getting this reading?" he wondered if it were not just a mechanical malfunction.

_"Yes, sir, but I can't see-"_

And then there was static.

And then there was black.


	6. lost in meaning

**06: lost in meaning.**

"Report of Specials regiment attacking rebel carrier at L3 satellite S03-26," Treize demanded curtly of his missions-affairs officer.

"Colonel Zechs Merquise's mission?" the officer clarified, shuffling through files.

Treize's eyes narrowed imperceptively, his voice cold. "Yes."

Successfully retrieving the requested documents, the officer skimmed the most recent page and frowned. "No return confirmation as of oh-six-hundred-hours this morning, when the scheduled-"

"I know the schedule," Treize snapped, intensely disavowing his increasing heartrate, "Has there been any word at all?"

"Reports of- oh..." his brow furrowed in something that was not a frown, and Treize clenched his jaw. "Sir... reports have confirmed the explosion of satellite S03-26 at around oh-four-hundred- Sir? Sir?"

Treize was already a vanishing flap of cape around the door.

* * *

Lady Une's private office door slid open unexpectedly, and she glanced up with what would have been an intimidating glare in time to see the General of OZ somehow manage to burst through the gap with the most wild expression she had ever witnessed on his handsome face: a grimace to his prim lips and a severe arch to his elegantly split eyebrows. All she could do in response was raise one of her own before Treize was slamming his palms onto her desk. "Are there any scheduled transports to L3 or near within the next hour?" he growled.

"Your Excellency? There is a routine deployment barge to L3 base-"

"Put me on it."

"If I may be so bold, Your Excellency, what on earth is the meaning of this?"

"I'll need a spacecraft as well, preferably with mobile suit retrieval capabilities." Finally Treize straightened himself, removing his hands from the shaken desk and dropping them to his sides, regaining his regal posture, and completely ignoring the Lady's query.

"Sir, I'm afraid you have a meeting with Romefeller members-"

"Postpone it."

"It is in regards to mobile doll production."

"Postpone it."

"You've been planning this meeting for weeks, Your Excell-"

"_Postpone it,_" the snarl to his voice, though not raised in the slightest, was so dangerous that Une paused in her protests to deeply contemplate her General's state.

Her only reply was to soften her own tone and suggest, "Consider the consequences of breaking this meeting with such malleable members at such a crucial time."

"Zechs hasn't confirmed his return to base."

Carefully guarding her surprise, Une glanced at her desk clock. "Scheduled return was only two hours ago, Your Excellency, I'm sure it's only-"

"His satellite exploded, Une."

At the use of her name rather than her title, the slight slackening of his tense shoulders to her perceptive eye, the weariness behind his fierce gaze, Une stood to face her General fully, a muted display of her strength that she freely offered him. "Zechs Merquise is a very capable man, Your Excellency. Whatever happened has already happened, and we both know that if... anything is possible, he has done and is doing it. I will send a private speed-recovery squadron to the mission site at once, and you will attend your meeting with Romefeller to have your way with the Alliance."

Treize clutched his temples between an extended middle finger and thumb, one thin digit resting against his forehead and the rest arched outward, aristocratic even in his weaker gestures, feeling the sore tendon there flexing from his jaw. "Oversee it personally, Lady."

"Of course, Your Excellency. Your meeting is in thirty minutes."

"I need a drink."

Quickly suppressing a feminine smile, Une turned towards the finely-carved cabinets behind her desk. "No, you don't." She opened one and glanced over the various glass glinting in shadow. "Scotch, Your Excellency?"

* * *

"You cannot seriously expect that the production of war-technologies that eliminate the human element will not have lasting repercussions on the act of warfare and, by design, the interactions of humankind as we know it."

"I do expect repercussions," Dermail crowed, a keen leer to his face, "I expect that war will become a cleaner, more precise, less brutal affair."

"Fool," Treize hissed without altering his voice, "You expect that war will become the product of funding, and you expect to be in possession of great amounts of it. You expect to own the world."

"And what, young man, is the problem with _Romefeller, _a respected foundation," the Duke nodded towards his compatriots around the table, "controlling this world and stopping the senseless slaughter of war?" In a single sentence, the old man had invalidated Treize's military successes, ignored his powerful position, belittled him as a person, twisted his words to imply disrespect towards the foundation that supported him while including the members he sought to isolate, and morally justified their meagre excuse for power-hunger. Treize chose his next words very carefully.

"The problem, Duke," Treize offered Dermail the dignity of his title, appearing mature while the old man simply appeared rude, "is not whether Romefeller controls the world," -indicating no preference for _that _proposition- "the problem is how _you _propose we do that, by removing a very relevant aspect of the human condition- _sterilising_ the world, in fact, and blindly believing this will not affect peaceful life and will prevent future battles of the very real, human sort. You cannot remove violence from mankind in this _totalitarian_ manner," Treize's voice began to elevate, his tone impassioned, "Instead of preventing brutal war, you will simply be _rearranging_ the presence and type of brutality. An economic war will brew and rise in the wake of this decision, which will quickly give way to a war of information, as you all know is the logical progression," he entreated his audience into silent, agreeable nodding. "Rather than clashing on a battlefield, men and women will clash in private sectors in every occupied area of the world and beyond, and rather than erasing the clean, precise violence of a proper, _honourable_ war, you will have caused constant turmoil in daily life until, inevitably, physical brutality would re-emerge. Is this your plan, Duke? Control the world by destroying peace and _scavenging_ through the remains like a petty opportunist?"

Through this diatribe, Dermail's face acquired a very unflattering shade of magenta, but at Treize's final, utterly derisive epithet against his high and aristocratic position, the Duke lost his temper. "How _dare _you- you- impudent scrap of a boy, question _my_ authority?"

Treize arched his eyebrows, apparently in contemptuous disbelief of his Foundation superior's outburst, but this was exactly what Treize had been hoping for.

"_I _elected you in the wake of Catalonia's demise, _I _favoured you against Septum-"

"Then perhaps those were the last good decisions of your authority," Treize interrupted quietly.

Dermail sputtered in fury, spittle curdling over his wrinkled chin. "Out! Get out of my boardroom!"

"Excuse me?" Treize mused, his demeanour calm and almost wry in the face of the Duke's rage.

"You are demoted, you ungrateful juvenile! Foundation members, I propose a vote to remove Treize Khushrenada from his position as Specials Commander and General of OZ at once!"

An excited murmur immediately filled the room, swelling in volume as some members stood and protested outrage at the suddenness of this suggestion, at the emotional and overly-partial quality of the Duke's decision; some cawing in superficial glee at the prospect of having the young upstart removed.

"Not every member of the Foundation is here, we can't-"

"-unreasonable, Dermail, let's all calm-"

"-preposterous! This is unfair!"

"At last that ridiculous idealist will be-"

Treize stood silently, his palms settled firm on the table, catching the gaze of many of his supporters and willing them to cease their argumentation, staring down the agitation in his enemies until everyone was seated but him. Slowly the room quieted, a tremulous hush slinking through the Foundation until only Dermail and those nearest him were still cackling together, a pack of hyenas with glimmering, deceptive eyes in his direction. All gazes fixed upon the young, ruthlessly visionary Treize as he expressed his thoughts on the subject of Dermail's persecution of him.

"I resign."


	7. ghosts in a graveyard

**07: ghosts in a graveyard.**

_"C Quadrant clear, six of ours dead, twenty-three mobile suits by my count destroyed."_

_"E Quadrant clear, two corpses, sixteen Leos, and I think I found some chunks from at least three other bodies."_

"I'm not particularly interested in that detail of information, thank you Captain Reginoff," Une commented dryly, eliciting a subaudible murmuring chuckle over the com.

_"I've got something in G Quadrant."_

"What is it, Lieutenant Freimann?"

_"White metallic fragments that register as the same quality alloy in the Tallgeese."_

A slight frown creased Une's brow. "What size fragments?"

_"Large enough to be detected, but they appear to be splintered outer shell, not necessarily indicating critical damage to the Tallgeese."_

"All cleared units move to G Quadrant for further inspection." Une shifted to manual control of her retrieval vessel, piloting it out of its peaceful orbit around the full explosion site and towards that hot zone, silently calculating the ramifications of a dead Zechs Merquise and developing loose contingency plans, the idle chatter of a strategic mind. After a few moments too many of com silence, she groused, "Report?"

_"Nothing."_

_"Nothing here, Colonel."_

_"Nothing."_

The chorus of negation did little for Une's growing trepidation, and the crease in her brow twisted with severity. "Other assigned quadrants, report?"

_"A Quadrant, fifty-four mobile suits and counting, thirty-seven OZ dead and fifteen rebels, and so much debris I can't even see those beautiful stars. No sign of Tallgeese."_

_"B Quadrant clear," _another officer stated as she followed Une's secondary order and made her way towards G, _"Twenty mobile suits, thirteen OZ, seventy-one rebels, no Tallgeese."_

"Damn," Une hissed under her breath.

_"D Quadrant, fourty-six mobile suits, only one OZ, thank the heavens, and nineteen rebels. I'm still searching, but no Tallgeese yet."_

_"F Quadrant-"_

"Anything indicating the presence of Tallgeese?" Une interrupted the full report, weary of unnecessary information and anxious for something certain.

_"No, ma'am."_

Une cursed again.

_"H Quadrant clear, moving to G."_

_"Don't bother," _the first officer of G declared, _"G Quadrant clear."_

_"Where the hell is he?"_

"I Quadrant, we've heard nothing from you. Report."

_"I'm clear,"_ a voice finally responded, _"But this doesn't cover the whole remains of the satellite skeleton. Do you want-"_

"All cleared units flank to I Quadrant and spread across the satellite," Une immediately ordered before the officer could finish his suggestion, "Alpha unit members take exterior structure, Beta unit through interior."

Six mobile suits began drifting into formation and slowly dropping into the satellite, only two remaining visible as they meandered around the twisted ironwork of its rended shell, and silence flooded all cockpits as the pilots searched.

_"D Quadrant clear, moving to satellite exterior."_

_"F Quadrant clear, but ma'am..."_

"What is it?" Une snapped, her eyes narrowing behind their glowing lenses.

_"Tallgeese's left arm. Torn right off at the shoulder. May indicate critical damage."_

In her heart of hearts, Une trembled, a sickened dread spreading through her abdomen like cold poison. Outwardly her eyes became slits, but that was all. Her voice was steady, and dangerous. "Nothing else?"

_"No, ma'am."_

"Bring it to me."

The officer obeyed, collecting the detached mechanical limb in her own extended hands and slowly gliding into Une's visibility, Tallgeese's lost appendage glinting in front of her suit like the offering of some maddened ritual sacrifice to an oblivious deity, clinical and forlorn. When it was within reach of Une's retrieval arms she snatched it up, cradling it as she passed it inside the womb of her spacecraft as though delicacy could preserve a hope that the missing pilot remained untouched, hidden himself somewhere to be discovered only by careful manoeuvring and gentle persuasion, the broken body of a child grown too strong to submit to his own mortal needs, this lost soldier who proved so precious to her General. Une realised with some self-disgust that she harboured almost maternal feelings for the faceless Lightning of a blonde man, only a man, who understood intimately the understated malice of this abyss that was so threatening in Une's peripheral thoughts to digest him.

Suddenly, amidst the chatter over her com that screeched to a stark, garbled hymn of assumed loss, Lady Une heard the first whisper of her second self, isolated as this she was. She heard her temples splitting and the frost she incubated around her heart creaking, groaning against the weight of the real desolation of Space, of humankind's frail reach, the seeping agony in Treize's face when she admitted they could not recover the body, when she completed the ritual to this constantly-aware deity of suffering.

There is only one true form of sacrifice; the voluntary, the strength of desire for an ideal that motivates a willingness to suffer. There is no form of sacrifice greater than the self-made villain, for even tragic heroes retain the legend of their names, the sympathy of their refugees. Even tragic heroes go to heaven.

Right then, in the gaping maw of that star-flecked blackness, Une prayed not to the choirs of that relished dimension of peace for which all dutiful soldiers wished- she prayed to the demons and the hell-gods, to the fallen rebels cast out for their sacrifice, to the greatest star of mourning in any of man's mythology. She prayed that Lucifer would take kindly to the brilliant man with the blighted fate he'd chosen, and that when _his _ritual was finally complete, the world he'd saved from itself would weep his tragedy, renown his heroism, and would not condemn him to the bleak destiny of villainy. Une was proud to be the secretary of the devil. If a nebula had formed before her eyes and spilled the highest leaders of the heavenly host right into her cockpit, she would have shuffled the devil's paperwork and asked them to come back later.

She saw Zechs' face, saw it bruised and mangled, saw it singed, saw the gleaming orb of earth inside his ribs and blood seeping through his fingers; she saw him grand, stretching onwards past their little mime of human trials, cradling the world and carrying it through a time with no need for devils or villains, the last great heroes wept and dried; she saw what was eternal in him, beyond his immortality, if he survived. She and the General were mutable figures, full-fledged members of the world, roles to be filled inevitably, but Zechs was a rogue complex in the story of the age. He was not the hero; too confused about his own purposes and working for the wrong man. He was not the prince; he had abandoned that title too long ago to recover it. He was not the knight, for his armour was now scattered across a wide section of the abyss, and he was not slated to die like this. He was here somewhere, still breathing, still static in the radar. Zechs was unique, and because of that Une was immediately certain that he would outlive his General, would remain Treize's only measure of comfort and support through these last days and would then be the one to attend her dark prayers of remembrance, as he unshackled the world from such strict fairytales.

Une saw it all through the quantum scope of this perspective way out in the black, and let that kind whisper of her duality take hold.

Removing her glasses and setting them atop the controls, Une entreated her command with an uncharacteristically gentle voice, "Keep searching."


	8. beasts in a junkyard

**08: beasts in a junkyard.**

Treize let the ice in his brandy melt.

He sat, slightly slumped, in the armchair of his home office, and let the twilight soothe his burning skin. He didn't rise to wash the ancient room in desklamp when dusk faded into bruised night, didn't absorb the history of his family estates that he carefully collected in each chamber of this, his favourite regal manor. He didn't blink much, gaze long lost its focus on the thick persian rug beneath his boots. He didn't sigh.

When Romefeller's Specials unit that was controlling his prison of a mansion made their rounds, one barging through his door to affirm his location, he did not flinch from the sword of light and noise pollution that stabbed from the doorway, though it disturbed him. He simply flicked his gaze to the lukewarm tumbler forgotten in his hand, raised it to his lips, let it linger there as he scoured the burnished liquid with eyes suddenly too dry and stretched thin, and then failed to take a sip before returning to his previous stoic position. Treize didn't like his spirits so watered-down, but why bother relieving himself of what had become a perfectly comfortable relic of his last four hours of disassociated contemplation? House arrest, after all, did not demand any strenuous activity such as fixing himself a new drink or, more importantly, standing. Neutered as he was here, cut off from the countless troops more loyal to him than their uniforms, unable to contact Une without use of military communications devices and determine the status of his missing lover, Treize may as well have fused with that armchair and rotted, to the delight of the Duke who had scheduled Treize's sudden stint in futility.

Numerous weapons were available to him in his abode, but none nearly potent enough to eliminate all that stood between him and any effective access to the world outside. He knew Dermail realised that he was far too poignant a figure to simply be removed; knew his resignation was an extreme surprise to all involved in the proceedings and the Duke had absolutely no further plan to deal with this psychotic ex-General. Treize's strategy was still well-guised. He just wished he fucking knew that Zechs was alive enough to take part in it.

Treize finally closed his eyes, a relinquishing act that eased the intensity in his face and drew his brow into a weary, throbbing furrow that he rubbed unsuccessfully with two fingertips. Who knew such relaxation could be so exhausting?

Again there was a slash of harsh light, the muffled voices and stomping of a unit on patrol. Treize added a wince to his current repertoire of inconvenienced expressions. "Somethin' troublin' you, sir?" enquired the jaunty voice of a Specials soldier who had just stepped into Treize's dark-soaked office. Silhouettes carried firearms these days.

"I'm afraid I've developed an awful headache," Treize mused at the intruding young man, indifferent to whether he would catch the snide in Treize's voice, "It must be due to the sudden herd of dumb brutes I've acquired."

"Somethin' Colonel Une could help with, maybe?" The soldier did not sound offended. In fact, he sounded furtive, obviously speaking a code Treize ought to have learned.

Sapphire eyes began to gleam. "I dare say she may be the only possible assistance, yes. It's a pity all my military equipment has been removed, and I cannot communicate with her."

"That's somethin' maybe I can help with."

"I would be very grateful."

"Don't need gratitude, sir," the soldier chirped as he closed the door quietly, instantly growing sober, "I just need your orders, General Khushrenada. I ain't no soldier at all without orders, and we ain't OZ without you. Me an' some of the other boys an' girls here will follow you straight outta this hellhole, you can count on us."

"Excellent," Treize glanced at the young man's insignia, "Lieutenant. Consider yourself promoted to Captain and rally those of you loyal to me into a small section to await my command. Send an officer with the necessary communications devices for me to contact Lady Une. Of course, I needn't mention that you must _not _be discovered?"

" 'Course, General, sir."

"Your name?"

"Lieu- Captain Anmodere, sir."

"You will be offered the proper promotion accommodations once my Treize Faction reassumes military control. Dismissed."

Anmodere saluted in attention and filed swiftly out of the office, taking the light and the last vestiges of Treize's impending despair with him. It was time to develop one of the many contingency strategies he had considered in his idle commiseration with the- Ah, yes. Time to pour another brandy, too.

* * *

_"What's that over there?"_

_"What?"_

_"Over where?"_

Hidden, Une rolled her eyes. "Be more specific, Captain Tarovsky."

_"Wedged in the satellite's exposed framework, maybe thirty metres three'o'clock from my facing. Reginoff, you're closest, turn about fourty degrees lef- Yeah, see it?"_

_"Affirmative. Approaching... holy _shit!"

The hope Une had been nursing since they discovered Tallgeese's arm unfurled at the base of her throat and flooded ice through her veins, but before she could respond, Reginoff was shouting again.

_"That's him! That's Tallgeese, no apparent critical damage to cockpit area, full pilot-protective structure intact, I'm running diagnostics now..."_

"Excellent work," Une managed to collect her voice and hammer it into a steady, confident praise. "Drake and Tarovsky, move in and inspect Tallgeese's position. We must be certain it's safe to remove the mobile suit without incurring critical damage. Diagnostic report?"

_"Life-support systems functional but running lean," _Reginoff rattled off,_ "oxygen levels at 40, heating at 62- If he wasn't wounded, Colonel Merquise should be alive in there."_

_"It appears that Colonel Merquise piloted the Tallgeese into this position, as there is no visible damage to the external shell that would indicate the Tallgeese striking the satellite after a blast."_

_"The remaining arm appears to be holding Tallgeese in place," _Tarovsky explained, _"We'll have to-"_

_fzzzzt"-move-"fzz"-legs-"fzzzt"-in, pilot-"fzzz"-Respond-"fzzzzzt"Come in-"fzzt_

"What was that?" Une demanded, switching her com to higher reception, accepting all immediate frequencies, "Everyone in my flight, silence!"

The static interference softened, fading into background white noise for a few tense seconds before a very familiar voice, weakened and strained, whispered into Une's wavelength, _"Come in, pilot. Respond if you read. Come in."_

Une's heartrate fluttered at that voice. "Colonel Merquise, I read. This is Colonel Une commanding a flight of Specials. Are you injured? Can you exit the cockpit?"

Penned private in his chamber that no longer seemed to double as his coffin, Zechs allowed himself a moment of sick relief, a moment out of the reverie of agony in which he'd been wallowing for the past thirteen hours. "You found me," he murmured, his voice almost childish with wonder, slurred. For that moment, Une's own worry roared back at the prospect of brain damage, of finding the soldier but losing the man, but then- _"No, I can't move much. I've lost"fzz" sensation in my legs and hands, and I-"fzzz"I'm-"fzzzzt_

"Come in, Colonel. Repeat?"

_"I'm trapped."_

"Are you able to open your cockpit? Can we pull you out?"

_"No-"fzzz"-suit is compro"fzzzt_

"Repeat?"

In frustration, Zechs shouted, "No! My suit is compromised!" and instantly regretted raising his voice above the perilous mumble he'd been managing. Wracked with pain, Zechs barely choked down the bile that threatened in the back of his throat, dizzy with the numerous throbbing areas in his immediate consciousness.

"We'll recover Tallgeese fully," Une acquiesced, flipping frequencies to order her troops into their various retrieval responsibilities, then flipping back to Zechs. "Release Tallgeese's hold on the satellite frame."

_fzz"-can't."_

"Repeat?"

_"I can't move,"_ Zechs rasped, losing his strength reserves exponentially now.

Une frowned in concern. If the pilot were unable to complete even a simple manoeuvre as that... Her voice softened, "How badly are you injured?"

_"It's bad, Une,"_ he admitted, his breathing becoming shallow,_"I'm- I'm pinned to the seat by a bar from the-"fzz"-panel. Through my- my ab-"fzzz"abdomen. Torn the suit. Don't think it p-p-" _ The sound of his hacking cough filled even the flight's airwaves, fluid gurgling in his lungs. _"p-punctured... organs."_

"Rest, Zechs. We'll cut through the satellite frame."

_"Beam sabre-"fzz"-t operational."_

Whatever Une's response was, Zechs didn't bother to listen.


	9. inertia of the brokenhearted

**09: inertia of the broken-hearted.**

_Let it take you, _the void said. No, that wasn't right. This was his voice, coming through the void on wavelengths of high static, those secret frequencies only the dead know. In the base of his ear and the back of his throat, the dead were humming, hymnals of the blood in his eyes. _Let it take you. _He was among them now, a member of the choir of corpses that decorated the long corridors of human history, the cast-off collaborators of each twist and turn that constructed those four walls with piles of their own mutating flesh, rotten and seeping together to form the organic structure of the world, plunging forward and backward into space- four walls; no ground, no up or down, only monuments of the deceased. Zechs was a member of the linear hallway of time, forged in the black. Zechs was...

Hurting. Slowly he surfaced, clawing his way through the rank and putrid bodies in his semiconscious dream to find his surroundings; Tallgeese cockpit, re: damaged. Various flickering alarms illuminated every display panel that still functioned, gleaming like a discotheque of prophesied doom.

Oxygen filtration level: 52 and dropping. Heating level: 74 and dropping. All life-support systems malfunctioning. _Let it take me? _Zechs wondered with the detached curiousity of a coma patient, _I don't seem to have much of a choice. _He tried to lean forward to grasp the controls and test Tallgeese's manoeuvring function, and was rewarded with a sudden wash of excruciating sensation that paled his skin and and drove goosebumps across his flesh, his expression blanked, drained of all motor function. _Fuck me, _his thoughts shouted, unable to vocalise even the expletive, unable to unclench his jaw. A trembling glance downward revealed a wide, flat slice of shrapnel, peeled off the control board like wet paper and plunged directly through his lower torso, pinning him to the seat. His blood was a sticky trail of curdling slime that slickened his lower body, poured into his lap and trailing down his shins into an alarmingly-large pool on the small crescent of floor.

"Fuck," he commented, testing the tremour in his voice. A low grunt dropped his head back against the seat where he had found it, and a sigh wrangled another raspy mewling of pain as his ribcage attempted to expand upon a metal skewer. _Short, shallow breaths. Come on now, think._

_You're going to die._

"I am not going to die."

_Oh that was good, very convincing. If only speech altered reality._

"It is not a reality that I'm going to die."

_Pinned to the seat of a malfunctioning mobile suit hundreds of thousands of miles away from anyone who might care to rescue you is the perfect time to confront your mortality._

"I might not die right now."

_Let's be realistic._

"Fuck you," Zechs snapped, and that was the end of that conversation. From his limited vantage point, he surveyed the various information screens and technical readouts that still functioned, but only reminded himself of what he'd already noticed. His oxygen would run sour before the simple heating system failed, which served at least to postpone the freezing of his corpse perhaps long enough for something recognisable to be carted back to Treize-

Treize.

_Oh god, Treize. _Fighting back the shivers that threatened to wrack his drained and dangerously cool body, fighting back the bile in his throat and the bitter metal behind his tongue, fighting with every rationalisation of his nerves begging him not to move, Zechs gripped the shrapnel through his midsection and pulled forward, leaning with it as it slid slowly from the seat. The strain almost spun him back to the depths of blessed oblivion, whirlwinds of his heart throbbing in his ears and the nausea spilling into his throat; he spat the bloodvomit that accumulated in his mouth and tried to rest, suspended as he was at this strange angle. Blood began to creep anew from the hole in his gut. He lost consciousness.

Regained it a few moments later, shivering uncontrollably from the cold and the pain and the bloodloss, and he was alarmed to notice how much farther away the explosion debris appeared on Tallgeese's display. He was floating too far, propelled by inertia. Zechs reached for the controls.

Flight jets offline, the screen informed him. No matter; neither he nor Tallgeese could have possibly survived atmospheric re-entry, and he doubted he could even make it to L3. He couldn't go back, he couldn't save himself.

He would just have to make himself saveable.

"Give me boosters," Zechs hissed, partly to quell the chattering of his jaw, "Come on..."

Boosters operational. Left booster running lean. With intuitive fiddling with power levels and some manouevring, Zechs managed not to flit around in useless circles. He limped the dessicated husk of Tallgeese towards the largest object he could find; the skeletal remains of the L3 satellite, splintered by the explosion. Gripping a large support rod with Tallgeese's single remaining arm, he swung himself inside the wreckage and wedged the mobile suit securely against the rod, in case the hydraulics went and Tallgeese lost its grip.

Treize would find him. He couldn't stay in this position; the angle was too rough on his waning circulation. Treize would come for him. He set the monitors to send alarms when piloted vessels entered Tallgeese's vicinity. Treize would know where to find him. With the last of his strength, Zechs pushed himself and his impaler back and sank upright against the seat, utterly spent and shuddering. Treize wouldn't let the void have him.

Zechs closed his eyes, and let it take him.

...

His face shrouded in shadow, garbed in lavish but nonetheless civilian clothing that left his chest conspicuously bare of glittering stars and symbols, Treize waited. They stood silent and stiff in the night of his office, lit only by what light permeated the blinds and through the cracks around the door; three decently-ranked officers and the proud man who commanded their loyalty, with small military machines at their feet. Finally, a fourth officer slipped inside the room, carting with her the missing link for complete assembly of the communications-encoding device Treize had requested. She set it beside the other components and apologised, but Treize excused her with a dismissive wave. "Assemble it."

Three of the soldiers instantly began to work, connecting wires and typing in codes, but the fourth - a now-solemn Anmodere - remained fixated on the general, his brown eyes gleaming like the shells of insects. "Once I've ordered the strike," Treize began, his voice secretive and sombre, "there will be no small amount of chaos within my manor. My soldiers must know their enemies, but your very comrades will become enemies once the loyalties of the OZ armies are divided. We must decide on a definitive mark to indicate those in my faction, and this mark must be changed during the phases of battle to reduce the risk of imitation and infiltration. Do you have any suggestions?"

Anmodere considered. "Our caps, sir? We could remove them."

"Hmm... Alright, that will suffice for the first phase. During the second wave of attack, you will also remove your names and insignia from the breast of your uniforms."

"How many phases do you think there'll be, sir?"

"It's difficult to say. Lady Une's force should quickly overwhelm the regiment here, and with my followers in the control room, Dermail's faction should be completely unaware of my escape-"

"Sir?" one of the other officers tentatively interrupted, and Treize paused in his discussion to glance down at her expectantly. "The device is complete. We've patched codes into all present frequencies so the transmission will not be detected. You need only to enter the code to your private frequency, and you will be able to connect to Colonel Une unhindered, sir."

"Excellent. Those of you present, pay very close attention as I describe the plan of attack to the Colonel; you will need to recall it and describe it to the troops under your command." The officers stood in attention and saluted, and Treize knelt by the machine, and began to work.


	10. seeds of the stars

**10: seeds of the stars.**

Alpha unit made quick work of the satellite's frame, and with the efficiency of a trained machine behaving under the single will of a control room, they safely transported the beaten remains of Tallgeese into the belly of Une's retrieval vessel; settling it beside the severed arm that was no longer evidence of a sacrifice, now seemed a portion of the healing process.

"Good work," was all she offered, her throat pinched with relief and the pressing urgency of Zechs' condition, but her soldiers knew and understood and set about the frantic efforts of peeling open the damaged cockpit in silence.

Une made her way to the cargo bay of the vessel, her open palms trailing down the blinking and whirring machines she passed like a somnambulist; slow and dreamstate, remembering her location only by the touch that burnished this passage with the very human oil of her skin. She left her remnants in her wake, imagining the gently drifting graveyards of alloy she had personally relegated to the endless confines of space; her own list of the deceased and their destroyed machines that would never rust, never decay. She had no shadows out here; no certain way to mark the sun, to find her position, to know her feet were on the ground. She had no ground, out here.

So she took what she needed and left what she could, and felt that humans could never adapt to being aliens themselves; they were designed for the Earth, from it, and no manner of the outstretched regimes of technology would change that. Animals of dust and dirt.

Une entered the cargo bay in a surreal daze. Two or three soldiers on the peripherals of the work snapped to attention, and she waved them away with a dismissive hand. The medic was ready. Then, with a groaning and a final crack, Zechs was out.

Unconscious, of course, but even the sight of his prone and wounded body had Une scrambling to his side, stiffly overseeing as the medics began running diagnostics, checking his vitals, discerning his condition before he could be pried free of his impaler. His sticky blood began to ooze off the edge of the cockpit floor, plopping in sickly chunks.

"Report?" Une groused, her stomach churning in revulsion.

"Nice... to see you... too," came the gasping, shuddering voice of Zechs, revived by the wash of fresh oxygen from the cargo bay. His eyelashes fluttered as he focused, found the sight of her.

"Be quiet, Colonel," she grunted, choking back the choking in her throat. "The medics need to work."

"I hope y... you're paying them... well."

"Be quiet."

She spun her back to the infuriating, immortal pilot and stomped back to the control room, following her own trail as the beeping devices and tourniquets descended upon him in her absence. It was time for Treize to be allowed to relax.

...

_Beep. Outgoing communication. Beep. Outgoing communication._

Treize allowed himself the minor satisfaction of a nervous tick, tapping his fingertips atop his bicep, arms crossed solidly across his chest. The quiet voice in the back of his mind was begging, _begging _in a bitterly uncharacteristic manner for his blond lover to be alright, to have been rescued and revived and patched together and fine, just fine, able to come to his aide in these decisive moments of battle that would permanently alter the state of his war.

A quieter voice was describing how he would act without him.

_"Colonel Une he- General Treize, sir! I was just about to com you-"_

"Is he alright?" Treize interrupted, voice too terse for his Lady. _Did you find him at all?_

Une offered the barest of comforting smiles, her lips pursed and curved on the screen. _"He's badly injured, but conscious and there appears to be no... damage." _Her meaningful pause found Treize releasing his entire lung capacity in one loud exhale. _"The medical team is hard at work. General, sir," _her tone was a steadying hand on his shoulder, _"he's going to be fine."_

"Of course he is," Treize confirmed with renewed confidence. "I, on the other hand..."

_"Sir?"_

"You must have noticed I am transmitting from a concealed feed. I am currently a hostage in my manor under orders of Dermail and the Foundation."

_"What?" _Une's posture stiffened, her eyes narrowing and drawing the harrowed guise of the soldier around her face.

"A small band of soldiers of various rank and position have declared loyalty to me, and we are forming the Treize Faction now. There will be a battle, milady."

_"I can be there with this Specials unit in 1800 hours."_

"By then, I fear the outcome will already have been decided."

_"I'll rally as many platoons-"_

"No, Colonel, we don't want to spread ourselves too thin in these crucial hours. I need you to send communication to all decidedly loyal bases, have them secure and locked-down. Loyal soldiers at uncertain OZ bases must be contacted by word of underground channels-"

_"The Gravity feed we set up your first year as General-"_

"Of course. We want as few deaths as possible while I am captive. Hopefully no skirmishes will break out, but we must be prepared. When you arrive here, we'll return to the Korokova Base and brief on further strategy." Treize rubbed his chin, the bristle of his 20-hour shadow tingling his nerves, already on edge with adrenaline. He felt intimately every shift of his skin, every furrow in his brow."

_"Understood, sir. Perhaps then you can explain to me just how the hell this happened."_

Treize responded with a wry smirk that quickly morphed into a knowing, secretive expression. "Take good care of him. Over and out."

Treize cut the transmission and returned his attention to his soldiers with a solemn sweep. "That was necessarily shorter than anticipated. Since the Colonel will not be present for the ensuing battle, we needn't bore her with the details." An appreciative chuckle murmured through the small flank. "Attention, soldiers. Our strategy is as follows..."


	11. buries the dead with his stare

**11: buries the dead with his stare.**

When Zechs opened his eyes, he remembered the state of the world. Gleaming countertops and polished steel assaulted his blurred vision, reflecting the harsh white halogen so integral to any medical aesthetic. The cold and the clinical, the machines built to contain his brazen species in a finite entanglement of progress, did not bode well for his constitution.

"Oh," he tested his voice, slightly scratched throat, "hell."

Treize was not at his bedside.

The only reasons his befuddled mind could suggest were painful ones, full of loss and rejection and imminent danger. In fact, no one was at his bedside.

In fact, he didn't know where exactly his bed was.

Sitting upright proved a difficult task once he noticed the numerous wires and electrodes connected to him, and particularly the gaping hole in his chest that had been artfully sealed and salved.

Outside, there was artillery fire.

His view of the sky through the hospital window revealed miraculous bursts of sparks, flame and colour, bright blues and greens that tinted his paled countenance- _Green? That couldn't be right..._

With much meticulous toiling, Zechs plucked off the small suction cups littering his chest and forehead and stood, careful not to jostle the IV nestled in his forearm, careful to cover his wound and keep his torso straight. A few demented swipes at the heartmonitor stopped that infernal high-pitched _bleeeeeeeeeep_ of protest, and he dragged his IV drip towards the window; where he stood, impassive, to watch the fireworks.

He stood there while explosions of festive light streamed across the night sky, illuminating the excited cityscape below; celebrators crowding nighttime streets, rowdy and gleeful, noise-making and lifting little sparklers of their own aloft in answer to the stars. He stood there as those bright glinting trails danced down his reflected face, marking the ghostpaths of tears he had spent, the frail lines of contemplation this battle had etched into his brow- so easily banished in the wake of a smile, but he did not smile. He did not smile at the merrymaking of citizens and soldiers alike, neither resenting the other in this hour of shared recognition of the home of all humans; no matter that world was uncountable miles away, they kept its time, remembered their lives in the segments of its rotation. Days, seasons, new years. He stood there and saw his reflection in the clear glass, superimposed upon that eternal dark space with no sun to ease its potency; he saw the stars in his eyes and their explosions on his cheeks, fireworks or gunfire, tears of the damned. So few men were damned like him. Blood dripped down his abdomen.

He was still standing there when a nurse entered the room.

She uttered a little gasp and stammered only one of his names, clutching her clipboard for verification.

Zechs watched his lips move in the window, so detached. "Where is he?" _Was that voice really mine?_

"Sir, you can't be standing right now-"

"Can't?" _So this is what my smirk looks like._ "I'm already standing. _I am the Lightning Baron_; do not presume tell me what I can and can't do."

"Please, sir, why don't you get back in bed and I'll check your sutures-"

Zechs' translucent twin pursed his lips, eyes narrowing with a gleam to rival the lights glittering in the black starry backdrop. "I know that nothing short of death, or a fight to it, would keep him from me right now, so why don't you just tell me _where he is?"_ These final syllables were punctuated by a dramatic spin, his unwashed hair whirling in oily strands over his shoulder and waterfalling down his bare chest as he glared bullets into the startled nurse. His IV drip skittered briefly on its pegs and descended with a resounding metallic crash, ripping the needle clean out of his skin when he slammed his palm down onto the bedside table.

The nurse flinched backward with a feminine bark of surprise, the fear inspired by this imposing and impossibly strong man uncurling through her in a cold flush. Even half-nude and injured, Zechs blazed with the aura of ambition. His eyes were not dead. His eyes were pools of meteors.

...

Cape flapping like a flag of honour behind him, Treize sped down the west hall firing through every open door he passed, expertly avoiding his own loyal regiments based on their strategic military cap placement.

Within minutes of the secret command meeting in his captive chambers, Treize's glorious personal battle broke out in all sectors of the Romefeller encampment. His private Gravity feed - so named for both the dire nature of the situation and its ability to draw followers in - was contacting base after base in a linear string much like the lit fire signals across lands of old, preparing for lock-down, waiting to wait it out. Treize had units in the control room monitoring feeds, units in weapons and mech storage cinching off Romefeller resistance, units scattered across the grounds taking hostages and gunning down hostility, and he was quickly slicing his way through Dermail's meagre safeguards towards the beating heart of the Foundation's coercive power.

At last he was upon the rich mahogany door, the one with ornate gold finishings he had selected himself, that led to his private office where Dermail was entombed, likely with an entire regiment of confused soldiers in wait. Several officers sans cap and insignia sidled up behind him, guns at the ready. Treize watched one kick in his beautiful door with a wince, regrettable splintering forgotten in open fire and two men down, three, his line of soldiers advancing bottlenosed into the chambre, pouring through swollen ranks of faces horrified to find themselves fired upon by their mirrors, and then it was done.

The soldiers were down; only Dermail and a few lower-ranking Romefeller pawns remained standing. That sordid old man with his prim, pointed moustache emphasising utter shock as Treize levelled his pistol at the high forehead-

"What? What do you think you're doing, boy?"

"I know exactly what I'm doing, Dermail," replied the General in a soothing voice, smooth and steady despite the last hour of murderous exertions, "I'm changing the world."

Treize pulled the trigger.


	12. out of the blue

**12: out of the blue.**

The body of Duke Dermail in death was worth study; almost comical against the context of how he'd lived within it. Treize's aim had been perfect and only the smallest round bullethole adorned Dermail's forehead, with a trail of blood dripping between his eyes like leaking ink from a bindi. It was the back of his head - one large exit wound - that did him justice. He was not crumpled, but rather stiff and sat against the main control panel, braced along his back and somehow maintaining the regal posture of rigor mortis like a professional. There was no terror in his brow, and his still-open eyes looked only to judge angrily that which would suppose to supplant his authority over anything, especially his own life.

Treize was still musing on the magnificence of his fallen enemy - perhaps the single most powerful architect of the sins of the world lay here, now, felled by Treize's own weapon - when a nervous Lieutenant suggested they barricade the General inside his office and finish securing the estate.

Treize smirked. "No, you can easily see what a death-trap _that _idea is. No..." He turned with the utmost sense of finality, dismissing Dermail's corpse from his thoughts. "I will continue this battle with my loyal troops."

The lieutenant saluted, and followed her General out into the hall.

...

Zechs stood beside Une with his hands clasped behind his back, posture rigid despite the steady throb of pain emanating from his sutures.

"You nearly gave your nurse a coronary," Une mentioned over her shoulder, tone mild and expression carefully guarded.

"I'm not satisfied until my captors are injured worse than I am," came Zechs' humored reply. Neither soldier moved.

"Captor- hardly." Une's glasses gleamed in the light of the flight monitors. "Welcome back, Colonel. I'm sure Treize will be pleased to learn that I allowed you onto this vessel in your condition."

Zechs' smirk could not reach his eyes, hidden as they were by his helmet. "Allowed, hardly."

Une's cheek twitched as she bit into it to restrain a smile. "At least get some rest during the flight."

"The one-hour flight?"

_"Rest,"_ Une demanded.

"Sure." Zechs was already a vanishing breeze of long blonde locks, so Une took the luxury of rolling her eyes.

...

As only troops organised and commanded by the most brilliant General to ever grace the warface of the post-colonial Earthsphere could, the Treize Faction mowed down OZ opposition in record time. Bases across the globe were locked down and secured before uprisings could even occur, and even the riots on the colonies that ensued from a sense of internal instability in the oppressive military were quickly subdued.

Around Treize's manor and the nearby bases, where Dermail's OZ soldiers were most clustered, the General's superior planning and guidance overwhelmed the lackadaisical intentions of Romefeller's erstwhile leader in short, violent eruptions of battle.

By the time Une's craft, still cradling the desiccated husk of Tallgeese in its bowels, arrived on the premises, Treize was lounging calmly in his favorite parlour chair, sipping at last a fine brandy with thick, unmelted icecubes, smiling and nodding at his Faction soldiers as they marched through the halls in one last exercise of security. Lieutenant Anmodere broke Treize's silent reverie.

"Sir, Colonel Une has just touched down on the south wing landing pad-" His eyes widened in surprise as the General bounded from his seat, a disappearing blur through the door before even his abandoned glass of brandy could topple to the floor, spilling its contents atop a very expensive persian rug. Anmodere blinked.

...

"All troops fall into flanking formation! Prepare for possible hostility! Your regulation caps and insignia must be removed! Do not, I repeat, _do not_ fire upon OZ soldiers and Specials who are not wearing caps or insignia!"

Une was too absorbed with barking orders and inspecting each ready soldier as he or she marched past for proper uniform alterations to notice Zechs, slithering as he was, slip out of an unmanned crew exit from the spacecraft. The conspicuous waterfall of platinum blond and impossibly tell-tale silver helmet, salvaged from the wreckage of Tallgeese, were no match for Une's pre-battle energetic chaos. Zechs, after all, bore those two visible assets like insignia of his own self-importance, and lesser soldiers did abide, and know him through all propaganda media as the interminable figure beside their beloved Treize.

It was that man for whom Zechs now searched, his lips stretching and then helplessly curling upward in amusement at the reality he now encountered of the state of Treize's manor; the battle was, of course, already won. Treize's inevitably triumphant struggle against the corporate tyranny of his own army was already made fiction, at least for the Lightning Baron who was supposed to have fought it for him. Instead, Zechs had been getting himself half-killed somewhere nameless off world, and he wondered if he'd be written into the annals of this event anyway, just for the hell of it. Just to maintain a better sense of congruency for the next generation; just to help him understand how he could be so much a part of the General's life and yet so little involved with the man responsible for it.

Zechs wandered mansion corridors with the flippant flair of a very tired artist, inspecting the remaining soldiers as they tended their dead as though he were studying the exhibits in a museum built specifically to display the style that _he _had invented, but was full of paintings by anyone else. He had not been needed here, not even in Treize's personal living space, not even for the first battle that heralded a new era in Treize's legacy.

Zechs wondered if he had ever actually been needed, or if he were just some weird caricature of a companion wearing all the wrong outfits at all the wrong times; a soldier's uniform when he should be in a butler's bowtie; a lover's handcuffs when he should bear a crown; and always the garish maquillage of a clown.

Zechs couldn't even die when he was supposed to. He felt so always one step behind the complex tune of Treize's personal waltz.

He stood, then, and questioned, with fear beginning to boil behind his eyes, if Treize even missed him at all.

...

Treize was running.

It was not an activity he particularly relished, and not one he had performed since his days of academy training, but Treize did running the way he did everything else: perfectly. He was quick, he was deft, he was maintaining the trail of his cape with practiced grace as the soles of his boots barely skimmed the floor; he was _sprinting._

In this fashion he sprinted around the corner of the main south wing hall-

...and skidded to a pronounced stop just before a tall man with flowing blonde hair, whose visage was shielded by glinting silver steel.

Treize's own expression went slack, wordless, chest heaving for laboured breath above a racing heart, the sound of his panting audible in a silence split only by distant report.

Zechs' lips were already quirked in a wry smile, and Treize could not decipher it. He inclined his head backwards to indicate the clear glass behind him, filled with spilling flares of deliriously-coloured light that punctuated the gunfire. "Don't they know there's a war on?"

Treize laughed.


	13. frail cogs of stone

**13: frail cogs of stone.**

"Dermail is dead," Treize began by way of explanation, as he closed the door to his personal suite.

Zechs waited impassively in the entrance hall. "What does that mean, for the Specials?"

"Let me worry about that," Treize hummed as he grazed his knuckles across his lover's cheek, a gesture at that moment no more soothing than the punch those knuckles were capable of inflicting. When Zechs remained still, glowering, Treize urged the blonde into his living quarters with a guiding grasp. "Come now, Milliard, don't ask me to discuss agonising strategy when I finally have you returned safely to my side." He swept a graceful arm towards the numerous decanters spread atop the coffee table, and collected two empty wineglasses. "Let us instead celebrate our victories."

_"Our_ victories?" Zechs repeated, with skepticism wracking his tone, as he removed his mask of a helmet and shook long platinum locks loose. "I just made it out alive. It's your victory- you're the one who worries about that, remember?"

Treize did not bother to study the adonis revealed from beneath gleaming steel, instead removing the cork of a dusty wine bottle with practiced ease. "You're cross with me."

Zechs turned his profile to the sight of that controlled man with a heavy sigh. He watched the paintings on the wall.

The General poured both crystal glasses full of aged red wine, surely thick with tannins and just bitter enough for the taste of the evening. He offered one to Zechs between two slim fingertips that fully supported the bowl, the rest of his form still, his eyebrows raised enticingly. When it was not accepted, he twirled it teasingly in the air, its flared stem rotating in even circlets where it dangled from his grasp, and the sanguine liquid was stirred. "Would you deny a doomed man his final luxuries?"

Zechs assented to the proffered wine because he simply wanted to remove the distraction of it from Treize's person; he knew his superior officer would not cease pestering him with it otherwise, and he had important things to discuss. "Why do you say that?" he demanded.

Treize took a long, savouring sip from his own glass, an infuriating pause before he answered, "We always knew you would outlive me."

Zechs narrowed his eyes. "What is this 'we?' Treize, I don't know what your intentions are from one moment to the next, how could I predict your life expectancy?"

"Then why argue with me," Treize tilted his head downward to intensify the stare with which he fixed his blonde pilot, "when I tell you it's coming to a close?"

Stiffly, miserably, Zechs worked out his explanation for the fault of logic Treize had pinpointed, and only the tense flexing of his jaw indicated his effort. He threw his gaze away, to the side. Finally: "There's no reason."

"No reason?" An embittered chuckle coloured Treize's throat. "Ah, how you forget me in my old age. I am nothing if not reasonable."

"Spoken like a true madman," Zechs groused.

Treize enjoyed more of his precious fine wine, and chastised Zechs with his tone. "I doubt a madman knows what he's doing."

With a lowered voice, with shame in his mouth, Zechs muttered, "I doubt that you do, as well."

Treize snapped his gaze onto the younger man, now that he sensed a threat to the state of his chessboard. "You've never doubted me."

Maturely, Zechs rolled his eyes. "I am a paragon of doubt, Treize. Just because I've always followed your orders doesn't mean I never doubted them. I..." He tossed his head, searching the room for something meaningful, and settled on the sight of his own darkened eyelids. "I had nothing better to do."

"You're allowing your mood to colour your perception of the past, you're warping memory." Treize uttered with scorn, tipping the rim of fine crystal that Zechs still clutched towards his lover. "Have a drink."

Automatically Zechs obeyed, and was momentarily transported out of his wits by the intensity of Treize's quality wine filling him, like rose-tainted silk enveloping the soft palette of his tongue before it poured down his throat in one smooth thick line; an inside-out cord of strangulation, suffusing his own soft tissue instead of constricting around his throat. Instantly his nerves were set alight, buzzing timidly within the solid frame of his muscled body. Zechs observed from somewhere outside of himself, somewhere he could be lost in addiction to this absenteeism, as Treize refilled his glass with more elegant poison.

"You have a plan, then?" Zechs finally spoke, raising his eyes to the General, "To orchestrate your demise?"

Treize's smirk was too rehearsed. "I always have a plan."

"Of course. Were you ever intending to share it with me?"

"I'd rather share with you my bed."

"I'm too injured to withstand your affections these days," Zechs murmured, lifting the hem of his dress shirt to reveal the still-fresh stitches he bore.

True to his earlier claim over rationale, Treize did not press the matter, and neither man could find a suitable response to the silence that lapsed between them.

They drank, and said nothing.

Zechs cradled his wineglass between both hands as though it were a delicate artifact of the raging tides he nursed regularly from behind the steel mask of a massive machine, as though it symbolised the last vestige of his own weeping humanity, to be handled with care lest it shatter in the wake of the robotics he performed; a totem beneath his throat into which he gazed listlessly, eyes dimming, until not even his thoughts were focused. He let himself be moved by the sensation of impending intoxication. He let himself be drowned.

"I can't do this anymore, Treize," he murmured into the gently sloshing wine at the bottom, transfixed by the way his long fingers curled so evenly around the bulk of the glass; both hands perfectly poised, each a mirror to the other, like ornate carvings on a grecian pillar. Not hands. He forgot the weight of the wineglass against his skin; he could not remember how it was to grasp such a thing, to hold it. Not his hands. He felt like waxwork.

"What can't you do?" The General's tone was defiantly teasing. Treize was such a dramatic paradox of omnipotence; he took himself far too seriously, as the purveyor of all matters grave, to be capable of regarding anyone else with seriousness, but he seemed to produce an infinite amount of _being_ serious- surely he could spare enough for the lowly fallen prince. Surely he could not exhaust his own supply of seriousness on himself, for he did, after all, produce infinite seriousness- That is to say, by _being _serious-

Zechs was making himself dizzy.

Treize could not be a god when even he struggled to keep up with his own significance, and now there was no significance to be allowed for his other, the man who had done nothing to earn his dormant royal title, or any others titles he bore... save one, shared with the equally-accidental nature of the skies.

"Milliard?"

Inexplicably, the Lightning Baron giggled.

"I believe the wine is going to your head, my love."

"It can't find my head, _that's_ the problem. No-" Suddenly awash with determination, Zechs slapped the stem of his glass down onto the table, a demonstration of his reconstituted resolve that drenched his hands with a wave of spilled wine. When he removed them from the object he had been mindlessly clutching, startled to remember there was something there, they were coated with oily dripping red. Zechs stared down at those fleshy extensions of his will and waited for his eyes to burn through them, but the blood never came. The blood was already there. The blood was slicking off, splattering into the carpet below. The blood was just wine.

All the blood he'd spilled- everything that Zechs did- accomplishment or assassination, Treize had bottled for his own pleasured consumption. Treize ordered Zechs in little bottles, one for every meal. A slice of war, a spoon in bed-

Treize covered Zechs' wine-sticky hands with his own, and at last those steaming cerulean eyes looked for another target in the older man's face. "You were saying something, Milliard?"

"I am not to be drunk," the blonde growled between grinding molars.

Treize issued a soft chuckle. "Sometimes you can't help it."

Zechs frowned. "I never can, with you. You always know the right bottles..."

"Bordeaux is not your strong suit, hmm?"

"Au contraire-" Zechs purred with bitter humor, "I have a suit of armour, but you seem to drink that down with no trouble."

It was Treize's turn to frown. "Pardon?"

Zechs glared at him. "We are not discussing the same topic."

"Bottled wine."

"Bottled _me," _Zechs failed to clarify.

"You _are _drunk-"

"I have been, by you, for a very long time. It ends tonight."

"Ends?" With one quick strike, with the violence of the title for which he was famed, Zechs set Treize's heart still. "Nothing ends tonight, Milliard- we have not yet written the final chapter."

"I will not be featured in it."

Treize set down his own glass at last; he needed both hands free to juggle the severity of that moment; he did not feel equipped to grasp the full weight of it. "What are you saying?"

Zechs stood of his own accord, if a little unsteady on his feet, and it felt good. Staring down at the paralyzed man who had so daunted and governed the whole of his adult life, he declared, "General Treize Kushrenada, consider me AWOL."

Treize's mouth fell open at just the slightest angle, but it was the most extreme reaction Zechs had ever elicited, so counter as it was to the entirety of the ginger-haired man's countenance. "You're not thinking clearly," he managed.

"I'm thinking clearly enough to know that I am terrified."

Treize stood, but still could not achieve level ground with his own subordinate warrior, now that Zechs had found a new mission to execute with the very talents Treize relied upon. At last Zechs knew why he was wanted, why he was so coveted by the man who had it all; _Zechs _had been it all. Here was the essence Treize would seek to devour in each sip of the Lightning Baron that he took; Zechs was powerful. Zechs was a _weapon. _It was time for him to begin controlling that weapon himself.

"I'm _terrified_ to become what you have always been for me, and I'm confident that I will not excel in that, your specialty..." Here, his words slurred. "But... I am also _sickened_ by what I have been willing to accept as the alternative."

"If you're making an arbitrary stand just to-"

"There is no other kind of stand to make," Zechs interrupted. "Not when the enemy is your own reluctance."

"This is treason."

"So hold a trial."

At that, Treize clenched his jaw until the muscles spanning it were flexed taut, and he turned away from his final intimate gaze with his disappearing lover to cross the room in stiff, definitive strides. "Go, then. Abandon me."

"I prefer to think of it as rejoining myself, not abandoning _you."_

Treize leaned heavily upon his desk, covered with stacks of paper whose issues contained therein could crush the shoulders of any man, but themselves would only flutter harmlessly to the floor were they dropped. It was not until Treize's palms were flat upon the varnished mahogany that his desk began to creak. "I loved you," he whispered. "You were mine."

There was nothing covering Zechs' face to hide the sickness in his eyes. "I have learned something that not even you can claim as yours."

With an expression of immense impatience, Treize whirled to face the man with two faces, knowing that now neither belonged to him. "And what's that?"

"There are things that only the dead know."

Treize was silent for a moment. "Happy new year, Milliard."

The tall blonde rebel left his silver helmet to gleam on the chair as he closed the door behind him.


	14. forged in triviality

**14: forged in triviality.**

When it's quiet, I can hear them weeping.

The shrill tears of abused machinery, dripping in far-away clanks of rusted apertures and the muted clanging of metal arms locked in battle. I am not plagued by the cries of dying men or the pleas of wounded prisoners; my lullaby is no more than that cold avant-garde industrial rhythm. Other soldiers dream of bloodshed; my dreams are blanketed in black oil. I am a pilot.

I am the best pilot OZ has ever seen.

I am alone now.

I've spent my newfound free time wandering like the ronin of old, but I can't decide if I'm a disbanded warrior or just a disowned pet. I can't decide much of anything yet, and that is why my uncertain footsteps take me nowhere particular; nowhere I'd really care to be. What I have lost is my master, not my proverbial sword; I've lost the convenient food bowl set out for me at predictable intervals.

Pet, then.

The cruel fangs of winter are descending now, and that leanest of seasons - however artificially produced it may be - like the feral predecessor of whatever domesticated breed I am that still roams wild, threatens soon to devour the last of my personal reserves. I've been moving on pure adrenaline, these recent days; obeying the fever in my blood that causes even a dog like me to yearn to be unleashed. Ah, but it's mere delusion, it's feverdreams, just that seductive tingling in the veins- should I be confronted with a real wolfpack, they would tear me to pieces, and leave my corpse to be buried in white.

The snow will fall any day now. I can see our simulated atmosphere brimming with it. How I wish it were not snow, but the last of the worst empires of war ready to fall. How I wish it were the hearts and minds of our bedraggled people to brim with this hope.

Instead, it will all be white. Purifying in the sense that nothing after can be distinguished; that all becomes trivial when frozen. It amuses me, in a sickened way, that my concerns have become so mundane of late. The dog trained for attack wonders where to find his next meal, ha.

I am wounded by the cold.

Winter is the untamed indigenous mongrel of the seasons that reminds all the rest just how mild and controlled they've become, toiling for years alongside the subversive hand of man. Winter is when even the attack dogs cower from its unruly fangs of white.

It is through these white fangs that natural balance is restored; violently, aggressively, with unforgiving chaos that decimates the ersatz order of man's devising, the cause of his complacency. And complacency, or even worse, clinical purpose and precision, in the name of warfare - that dangerous art for which I have been so trained and made into the dog that I am - is a horrifying condition for mankind. It makes the wilderness of chaos seem innocent from the misfortune it may happen to cause, and the uncertainty of coping with it seem most humane.

After all, is that not the endgame of man's evolution out of accident and into design? To build a safe haven of reason out of the way of chance? To give the roaming dogs a place to come home to, where killing for food is unnecessary?

It is when we same dogs are harnessed for our killing prowess, not for the purposes of that very nature from which we have been plucked and made to disobey, but for the purposes of obedience to a new master with intentions of suffering on his mind, that man's calculations become far more unjust than the simple, arbitrary equations of nature.

It is one thing to contend with the calamity of blizzards; that is the balance of chance against reason; you build a warm fire. It is wholly another thing for man to concoct blizzards of his own and hurl them at himself.

That is when the time comes for winter to reclaim herself. That is when we attack dogs return to being wolves.

The houses of men are no longer safe when man is responsible for making weapons of us all. Treize knew this. What terrified him the most, I remember, was the idea of removing the anatomy of nature from war entirely, so that not even the inherent forces of the world could remain at work to steady our bloodlusts. Mobile dolls completely disallow the one thing, that one insurmountable truth of our world, to reign us in: death. If we mastered death in the same way we mastered dogs-

He put a stop to _that, _though. He didn't let humanity get too out of control, but the problem is that Treize, with all his continued war games, is still _in _control. He has surpassed the boundaries of nature and sent the world to slaughter.

And I, his faithful dog, made the massacres.

No longer.

Still, he is not alone in his crimes. I will take the one thing away from him that burdens him most- responsibility. Treize, my beautiful, horrible master, is not solely responsible for the state of the world. He simply rose from the ranks of the ravenous and the injust for being _better_ at it. More exacting in his ravenings, more precise with his injustice. He is the very embodied concept of man's stranglehold of enforced order.

It's time for chaos to rise up and meet the challenge, to restore balance and, therefore, peace to humankind. But Treize, in his brilliance, has reached the extreme- he has _created_ the end of the spectrum. He fights the war to end all wars, but he _fights_ it.

I am going to end it for him.

If this is the will of the cycle of nature, if Treize had to become this mad caricature of evil to prove what evil really is, then I too must go to the extreme.

I have been to the edge of space, where all of time stands still and even the mighty reach of man's prerogative falters. As a pilot, as a battle-hungry attack dog starved by his master, I traversed that blackness.

Now, I must run to the edge of reason, where madmen are made. I must go wild.

Treize, you have been the devil of this world, and incited angels to meet you, to stave off your conquest... but they are losing. There is one factor in all your battles of good and evil that not even great tacticians notice: the battleground. Treize the sinner, and Relena, my lost sister the saint, you are both the apotheoses of order. You have forgotten that chaos is the law of the land on which you host your war for the souls of our kind, and in this forgetting have rendered us soulless.

I will remind you.

You both, the keys to twin halves of my severed heart, have entangled yourselves too deep in this senselessness. After all, ancient civilisations called for ceasefire during the harshness of winter, for no man can find reason for killing when the white blanket of disorder descends, and the wolves bare their fangs. I will make you distrust all dogs bred for violence; the way our heathen counterparts behave.

With whiteness and fangs, I will put you back in your places. You are men, not deities or prophets or masters or minstrels; just men, and the world is cruel enough without your petty disagreements.

With whiteness and fangs, I will show you what you _should _be fighting, and it is not a fight you can win with bullets and bombs. It is a fight you can only win with each other, together.

I love you, Treize. Relena, you haunt the empty halls of my memory where a good man once lived, but he has gone from there and can never return. You will finally see my face, and it will be _my _face; not a concealing helmet of impartial steel, but you will not love it. It will not be the bloodhound of OZ, nor the docile companion of the peaceful Sanq; it will be the face of a wolf you cannot fathom, and the trivial effects of winter and wildness will forge a new era for humankind.

I love you, Treize, but_ I am coming for you._


End file.
